


Someone to Carry Us

by myrtlebroadbelt



Category: Dark (TV 2017)
Genre: Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship, POV Child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-19 09:08:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29623965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrtlebroadbelt/pseuds/myrtlebroadbelt
Summary: “We’re special,” her mother told her. “We don’t need anyone else but each other.”Hannah and Silja, in their time together.
Relationships: Hannah Kahnwald & Silja Tiedemann
Comments: 14
Kudos: 13





	Someone to Carry Us

When Silja was four years old, a boy on the playground hit her with a stick. Her face burned where it cut her, sharp as a real sword, and Silja cried as she watched the blood splash onto her shoes.

Mama drove her to the hospital, hands tight on the steering wheel, going on about stupid, _stupid_ boys, and how he could have put her eye out.

The nurse who came to help them looked like every other nurse Silja had ever seen. She was dressed all in white, with a funny hat on her head. The only thing different about her was the mole above her lip. Silja watched it move as she spoke.

Her voice was soft, and she seemed nice. But Mama didn’t like her.

“I’d like to request a different nurse, please.”

She didn’t shout — Mama rarely did — but her tone was firm, like when Silja made a fuss about taking a bath. It must have worked, because the lady at the reception desk called someone else out right away.

The nurse with the mole looked confused at first, and a little bit like she wanted to say something. But then another nurse showed up, so she just smiled at Silja and walked away.

Later, after the sting of antiseptic and the pinch of stitches, Mama used her stern voice on the telephone with the boy’s mother. Silja never saw him on the playground again.

“Why don’t I have a papa?” Silja asked her mother.

Some of the other children had found it strange when she said she didn’t have one. _Everyone has a papa_ , they’d said. They’d wondered if hers was dead, and used words Silja didn’t understand, like _divorce_. 

“You don’t need one,” Mama said. “You have me.”

That didn’t make sense to Silja, who knew that most families had a mother and a father, and brothers and sisters, and maybe even grandmothers and grandfathers. Why would they have so many people if they didn’t need them?

“We’re special,” her mother told her. “We don’t need anyone else but each other.”

Silja frowned. She hated that word, _special_. It’s what Mama and the nurses and everyone had said about her scar when she first got it, but people still looked at her strangely for having it. Why did she have to be special when others didn’t?

Why couldn’t she have what everyone else had?

There was a house they passed sometimes on their walks through town. It was pink and blue, with a balcony and flower pots on the back steps. Silja thought it looked like something out of a fairy tale. 

Her mother must have thought so too, because she always stopped to stare at it when they walked by, although they never went closer than the street. 

“Who lives there?” Silja asked once.

Mama looked startled, like she’d been woken from a dream. Then she tugged on Silja’s hand, and they kept walking. 

“They don’t know us,” she said.

Even at five years old, Silja thought that was an odd way to put it.

One day, at the market on an autumn afternoon, Silja got lost.

She had been distracted by the cakes in the bakery case, and stopped to press her nose against the glass. When she looked up again, Mama was gone.

She began weaving through customers, looking for her mother’s familiar brown coat, her curly hair. It didn’t take long for Silja to become convinced that she would never see her again. 

“Are you lost?” asked a voice behind her.

She turned to see a freckled face staring down at her. It belonged to a girl much older than her, with dark hair in a long ponytail. Silja nodded at her, and the girl held out her hand. 

“Let’s go to the front of the store, okay?” she said gently.

Silja took the girl’s hand and started to walk with her. It wasn’t long before she heard a familiar voice calling her name.

Mama rushed toward them, dropping her basket of groceries. She swept Silja into her arms and told her she was sorry. Silja let go of all the tears she had been holding in, letting them soak into her mother’s coat.

“She looked scared, so I tried to help,” said the freckled girl. “I thought maybe they could make an announcement.”

Mama didn’t seem to have noticed the girl standing there. But when she finally looked up, Silja could have sworn she heard her gasp.

“Thank you,” Mama muttered, her hand shaking where it cradled Silja’s head. 

Then, without saying another word, she carried Silja through the sliding glass doors and outside, leaving their shopping forgotten on the floor behind them. The girl called after them about it, but Mama ignored her.

Silja waved over her mother’s shoulder as they left. Confused, the girl waved back. Silja could never figure out what was so familiar about her.

There was a knock on the front door one day when they weren’t expecting anyone. 

Curious, Silja peeked around the corner to see who it was. Her mother was facing away from her in the doorway, talking to an old woman on the front steps. She was strange-looking, like a character in a film, with silver hair and a long dark coat.

They only spoke for a few minutes, and Mama didn’t invite her in. After the woman left, she closed the door and leaned against it, looking sad. She hardly spoke for the rest of the day after that. 

A few days later, the woman returned. After speaking to her quietly outside, Mama came back into the house and told Silja to put on her shoes. 

“Where are we going?”

Mama pulled a suitcase out of the closet. “To see your brother.”

At first, Silja was afraid of the man Mama said was her brother. 

He was so much different than she had imagined — old and scarred and unsmiling. She clutched her mother’s hand tightly, wishing they could go home.

“He was just surprised to see us,” Mama told her as she tucked her into bed that night.

He hadn’t seemed surprised, Silja thought. At least, not as surprised as the man who showed them to their room — the one who knew Silja’s name even though she had never met him before.

“Things will be different tomorrow,” her mother said, kissing her on the head.

Silja fidgeted under the blanket, trying to get comfortable in her nightgown. She wanted to wear her pajamas from home, but Mama hadn’t packed any clothes in the suitcase she brought. 

As she closed her eyes, she thought about the old man’s scars, and wondered how he got them. It was something they had in common, she realized, and she suddenly felt ashamed of herself for being so bothered by it. 

It made her feel a little less scared when she woke up to find him crouched by her bed.

“I want to show you a secret,” he said, lifting a finger to his lips, and Silja thought maybe he really was the big brother she had hoped he would be. 

As he carried her out of the room, Silja glanced at her mother, lying still on her back by the light of a lantern. The sight would stay with her, even as she found a new mother, and something like a family, in the wasteland she called home.

She would pull it out of her memory like a photograph, trying to make sense of it.

It wasn’t until the year before, lying under the same roof and listening to her daughter’s first cries, that Silja finally understood.

**Author's Note:**

> Silja was born in 1988. We don’t know for sure if she and Hannah lived in Winden, but I wrote a [Tumblr post](https://gretchentiedemann.tumblr.com/post/632892834642558976/silja-was-born-in-1988-and-raised-by-hannah-for) explaining how I think they could have gotten away with it.
> 
> Shoutout to arcane--soul on Tumblr for [this post](https://arcane--soul.tumblr.com/post/639906143560482816) that inspired the fic’s ending.


End file.
